Cognitive ability and everyday functioning in women with Turner syndrome

This paper presents results from an assessment of cognitive ability and everyday functioning in a group of adult women with Turner syndrome (TUS). Twenty-three TUS women were compared with 23 matched controls with constitutional short stature (CSS). A subgroup of 10 TUS women were compared with their nondisabled female siblings. On the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Test-Revised (Wechsler, 1981), no significant group differences were found in Verbal IQ. There were significant group differences for Performance IQ and Full Scale IQ, largely due to specific deficits in the area of spatial and mathematical ability. These difficulties were also evident on the Benton Visual Retention Test-Revised (Benton, 1974). TUS individuals had significantly lower educational attainment than CSS controls but did not differ from their siblings. TUS individuals had significantly lower occupational attainment than the women in both comparison groups.     

A SERLINE-based union list of serials for basic health sciences libraries: a detailed protocol

In March 1981 the Consortium for Information Resources (CIR) was chosen by the Massachusetts Health Sciences Library Network to develop and automate a statewide biomedical union list of serials. Employing a commercial processor, ANSI standard Z39.42-1980, and SERLINE, CIR consolidated the journal holdings of six Massachusetts health-related library consortia. SERLINE, with its unique identifier as the single control element, governed the form of entry and bibliographic data for each journal. Additionally, SERLINE enhanced the union list by providing "see references" and general notations to map users to main titles or special information. An original feature of this union list is the "rolled" holdings and location statements intended to encourage even distribution of interlibrary loan transactions. The resulting union list of serials includes the holdings of 116 Massachusetts libraries, 94 of which are hospital libraries. The list includes nearly 3,000 unique titles and 15,000 holdings statements; production costs averaged $1.35 per unique title and 27 per holdings statement.     

Behind the Blackout Curtains: Female Focalization of Atlantic Canada in the <Emphasis Type="Italic">Dear Canada</Emphasis> Series of Historical Fiction

Novels from the Dear Canada series of historic fiction, published by Scholastic Canada, currently populate the shelves of school classrooms and libraries across Canada. This study explores two Dear Canada novels that chronicle significant moments in Atlantic Canadian history: Janet McNaughton’s novel (Flame and ashes: The great fire diary of Triffie Winsor. St. Johns, Newfoundland, 1892, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2014) which explores the Great Fire of Newfoundland in 1892, and Julie Lawson’s novel, No Safe Harbour (No safe harbour: the Halifax explosion diary of Charlotte Blackburn, Halifax, Nova Scotia, 1917, Scholastic Canada, Toronto, 2006), which explores the Halifax Explosion of 1917. Kenneth Kidd (Child Lit 33: 120–149, 2005) notes that “subjects previously thought too upsetting for children are now deemed appropriate and even necessary” in children’s literature (p. 12); indeed, the themes of both Flame and Ashes and No Safe Harbour resonate with recent attempts to represent broader and more diverse ranges of experiences in children’s fiction. Like many other texts in the series, these texts explore economic hardship and psychological distress. Furthermore, they explore events through the eyes of subjects who have, historically, had very little agency: female children. Drawing on narrative theory and feminist standpoint theory (Fuller in Writing the everyday: women’s textual communities in Atlantic Canada, McGill-Queen’s University Press, Montreal, 2004), this study examines the narrative techniques McNaughton and Lawson rely on to counterbalance difficult historical events with the appeal of young protagonists who offer subjective responses to the historical moment. This study considers both the ideological challenges and the possible advantages of circulating historical knowledge that is linked to girlhood and profoundly rooted in place. Ultimately, I argue that these young female narrators provide important inroads for interrogating what counts as history in historical narratives.     

Student Engagement in Research,Scholarship, and Creative Activity (SERSCA) Program: Sharing a Program Model from Design and Development through Evaluation

The Student Engagement in Research, Scholarship, and Creative Activity (SERSCA) Program at California State University, Stanislaus provides support for student engagement in these areas from idea conception through dissemination. Through assistantships, mini-grants, the Student Research Competition, and travel grants, the Program is designed to improve the overall quality of education and increase retention, GPA, the number of units completed, degree completion, and enrollment in graduate or professional school. In this article we provide an overview of the SERSCA Program and preliminary evaluation findings from the first year of implementation.     

The Role of Negative Affect and Physiological Regulation in Maternal Attribution

Objective. Mothers who attribute child misbehaviors to children’s intentions, and not to situational causes, show more hostile parenting behaviors. Why are some mothers more likely than others to make more hostile attributions (i.e., high intentional attributions and low situational attributions) when confronted with child challenging behaviors? We examined the relation between mothers’ perception of child challenging behaviors and their hostile attributions of child misbehaviors, with an emphasis on how maternal negative affect and resting vagal activity moderated this relation. Design. One hundred sixty mothers of 3- to 7-year-old children reported their perceptions of child problem behaviors, their attributions regarding child misbehaviors, and their temperamental negative affect. Mothers’ respiratory sinus arrhythmia was measured during resting state. Results. Maternal perceptions of child challenging behaviors were positively related to hostile maternal attributions, and this relation was strongest in mothers with high negative affect and low resting RSA. Conclusions. These findings indicate the importance of considering mothers’ affective and physiological attributes when examining social-cognitive processes in parenting.     

Unresponsiveness in Children with Severe Disabilities: Potential Effects on Parent‐Child Interactions

This paper examines the potential effects on parent‐child interactions when children, because of severe mental and physical impairments, are unable to exhibit most social responses. A model is proposed to explain why a child is perceived to be responsive or unresponsive by parents and caregivers; the former applies only if the child's behaviour is recognized and valued by the observer. It is also proposed that: (a) perceived unresponsiveness may be more critical than the disability per se;(b) intense interactions early in the disabled child's development, commonly described by observers as controlling, intrusive behaviour, may be due to high levels of caregiver motivation and extinction burst effects; and (c) reductions in the amount of some caregiver‐child interactions may be the outcome of previously unrewarded interaction attempts and decreased expectancy levels.